After 60 years of proprietary building management systems, less than 2% of commercial buildings are connected to the internet. Meanwhile, more than half of American homes are connected. 

This connectivity gap is a business opportunity that building owners are desperate to solve. They want remote visibility into their facilities, predictive maintenance capabilities, and energy optimization. But decades-old protocols like Modbus and BACnet, combined with prohibitively expensive “rip and replace” upgrade costs, have kept the industry locked in place. 

Enter SkyCentrics, a Berkeley-based company that’s cracking this market wide open with an approach founder Tristan de Frondeville describes simply: “plug-and-play side by side” rather than “rip and replace.” 

From Grid Flexibility to Building Intelligence: The SkyCentrics Story 

SkyCentrics’ roots lie in the utility space, where they specialize in connecting buildings to power grids for demand response programs. Tristan explains. “For the last 100 years, all of our commercial machinery has gone on and off randomly. For the next 10,000 years, we need them to go on at the right time, and off at a better time.” 

These utility-run demand response programs offer substantial financial incentives for commercial buildings willing to shift their energy consumption. Building owners can earn thousands to tens of thousands of dollars per year per building by allowing their equipment to be temporarily curtailed during peak demand periods. For organizations with large building portfolios, these incentive payments can add up to significant revenue streams while simultaneously reducing strain on the electrical grid and lowering carbon emissions. In some markets, buildings can also participate in energy arbitrage, automatically shifting loads to times when electricity is cheapest and cleanest, further reducing operating costs. 

But there was a fundamental problem: the grid couldn’t control these machines because 98% of commercial buildings lacked the infrastructure to receive them.  

“The challenge SkyCentrics addresses is translating between different communication protocols,” says Tristan, “Many commercial buildings utilize equipment that communicates via Modbus or BACNet, industrial protocols that aren’t designed to interact with utility grid signals. The SkyBox acts as a translator, converting building management system protocols into grid-connected devices that can participate in demand response programs and access utility incentives. It is important to have a solution to connect directly to the machines for the 85% percent of buildings with no BMS.”  

For original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and building owners, this translation capability opens up new revenue opportunities through utility incentive programs while supporting broader energy efficiency and grid resilience goals. The plug-and-play cellular connectivity means deployment doesn’t require complex network integration or IT involvement. The SkyBox can be installed and immediately begin communicating with both building equipment and utility systems.  

Bridging Decades-Old Protocols with Modern AI 

SkyCentrics’ solution is the SkyBox, a Linux-based gateway that solves a problem: how do you make legacy systems speak to modern cloud infrastructure? 

“We’re really cracking the industry wide open with a solution that’s 10 times less expensive, has 10 times more functionality, and is based under the Linux Foundation, the world’s largest open-source community,” Tristan says. 

The SkyBox connects directly to existing building systems using their native protocols, including Modbus, BACnet, and LON, without requiring expensive infrastructure replacement. For commercial building managers, this means installing a single $500 box in their network closet side by side to access the building’s solar panels, batteries, building management systems, HVAC, and hydronic floor systems. 

Once connected, the SkyBox translates legacy building data into a modern tech stack ready for cloud connectivity and AI applications. SkyCentrics is building two AI capabilities on this foundation: 

Natural Language Query: Building operators can ask questions about their facilities and get instant answers by querying uploaded engineering documents and real-time system data. 

Agentic AI (coming soon): Autonomous agents will orchestrate building operations to reduce costs, predict equipment failure, and optimize the timing of capital-intensive replacements that building owners must make every 5-10 years. 

Why Blues Became the Connectivity Foundation 

SkyCentrics key customers are Master Systems Integrators (MSIs), architectural and engineering companies (AECOs), and mechanical, electrical, and plumbing (MEP) contractors who service millions of square feet of commercial space. 

These service providers present the SkyBox to their building owner customers as a powerful new solution that enables them to be more efficient while generating new revenue for building owners.  

For SkyCentrics’ business model to work at scale, connectivity costs had to be both low and flexible. Pricing became a significant factor in Tristan choosing Blues, he says, “The fact that Blues has the flexibility over long-term data rates and amount of data is what differentiates Blues for us and differentiates our solution to customers.” 

Beyond pricing, Blues’ architecture aligned with SkyCentrics’ product philosophy. Just as the SkyBox bridges legacy building protocols with modern infrastructure without forcing building owners to replace existing systems, Blues treats cellular connectivity as infrastructure, not a platform that demands you rebuild your application around its constraints. 

Join the Conversation: Modernizing Commercial Buildings 

For product designers, system integrators, and facilities managers looking to understand how connected products are transforming commercial buildings, SkyCentrics’ journey from utility-focused connectivity to comprehensive building intelligence offers lessons about market strategy, technical architecture, and channel partnerships. 

Want to hear more about how SkyCentrics is modernizing commercial buildings without expensive infrastructure replacement? Join Tristan de Frondeville for a fireside chat on Thursday, February 26th at 1pm ET / 6pm GMT where we’ll dive deep into: 

• “Plug and play” vs. “rip and replace” strategy for integrating IoT into commercial buildings  
• How to speak to legacy systems while delivering modern cloud connectivity and AI   
• How SkyCentrics leverages engineering firms and System Integrators to scale  
• The role of cellular IoT in making commercial building connectivity economically viable 

Register now for “10x Better, 10x Cheaper: Modernizing Legacy Buildings Without the Rip-and-Replace” 

Can’t make it? Register anyway and we’ll send you the recording.